The Democratic presidential contenders gathered for their first debate last week, a debate that MSNBC broadcast, webcast, and blogged. All well and good. But then MSNBC's rules for reusing debate footage surfaced, and journalism guru Jeff Jarvis nearly burst an artery in his anger over the restrictions. Most egregious was MSNBC's claim that no footage could be distributed on the Internet, but not far behind was the network's claim that no one was allowed to use excerpts after May 26, 2007, and could not archive them, either.

MSNBC seems to have come down with the sort of amnesia that removes all memory of "fair use" for news reporting, criticism, and commentary, but it's not a total disaster for citizens: the debate is archived and available in its entirety on the network's website.

That's not enough for Jarvis, who wants to see all the candidate responses chopped up and made available on YouTube or other outlets. He's not the only one. Lawrence Lessig and 75 other signatories have sent a letter to the RNC and DNC, asking both parties to require that all future debates be made freely available using Creative Commons licenses. When you can convince everyone from Michelle Malkin to Arianna Huffington to sign onto something, true bipartisanship has officially been achieved.

MSNBC hasn't fared well in the whole debacle, coming under fire from just about everyone (Media Matters even castigated the network for sexist coverage of the debate), and it's not even clear that the restrictions actually did anything for the network but give it a black eye. Clips from the debate already populate YouTube, many of them apparently posted by Joe Biden's own campaign. Although the spectacle of MSNBC tangling with Biden over takedown notices would be entertaining, don't expect it to happen; no one, not even soulless TV network executives, wants to be seen as a quasher of democratic (in both senses) give-and-take.

MSNBC obviously paid for the debate production costs and wants a return on its investment, but stirring up the blogosphere's wrath isn't the way to get it. The episode, while not reflecting well on MSNBC, doesn't make the candidates look so hot, either. Given that these sorts of events are crafted after much careful back-and-forth by lawyers and campaign strategists, who thought that agreeing to these restrictions was a good idea? Or did some candidates truly believe that limiting Internet access to their words was a safer course than making them easily available? The Internet has already shown that it won't abide this sort of stage-managing.